Well, I imagine there's nothing quite as effective at humbling the ambitious as forcing them to accept the sacrificial aspects of leadership. Somnus gets the power he wants but has no choice but to sacrifice most of his lifespan to save his people. That would be a good way to flip their...

Oh, that makes a ton of sense! The voice sounded like Luna, but corrupted, so it's reasonable to think that it'd be the first Oracle speaking from the corrupted Crystal.
Maybe Ardyn goes to the Crystal begging it to heal the Oracle, but it draws her soul into it instead. I'm sure he'd take...

Another thought:
In the trailer, Ardyn says, "The Starscourge is a disease. We must not condemn our fellow man and exile them as if they were monsters."
He also shows up in a hood when he heals the girl who's infected.
I wonder if Ardyn is rebelling against conventional wisdom that the...

I think this is close, but I'm inclined to think that the Oracle's death happens before Somnus rushes forwards and in a less physically violent way, because there's no blood anywhere when Ardyn is holding the Oracle's body. Brotherhood was shockingly bloody when it showed how Noct was injured...

It's worth pointing out that, given that LumiPro is basically just a bracketed-off section of Squenix's internal development, a $33 mil writeoff doesn't necessarily equate to LumiPro being strapped for cash. Most likely, it means that one big project fell through, which Squenix could reasonably...

Why assume that no money exists for the game besides what is being used for Episode Ardyn's development?
The cancellation of the remaining DLCs doesn't mean that money that would have been used for an Episode Ardyn-adjacent patch, for one thing. As far as I can tell, the free patches served...

I don't think that an Insomnia addition is likely, but there is one way it could be done that could work reasonably well:
Replace the tutorial and lore room options with a KH-style extended tutorial in Insomnia.
Since it'd still be optional, the beginning of the game could remain as-is. The...

Insomnia was decently large in the Royal Edition, so... I suspect around that size, though the parts we visit might not all be the same.
Given that playable Ardyn makes no sense at all and they've already added a summon for the FFXIV collab, a post-game Ifrit summon seems like a reasonable...

If Luna is added as a party member, it would almost certainly be a post-game thing, yeah. I don't think that's a reason not to do it, though; they added plenty of "impossible" things into the post-game already, like the Regalia Type-F and the Adamantoise fight (and, I think, the Regalia...

I wouldn't say "no way of knowing."
Not to mention, both the Terra Wars and FFXIV collaborations were able to add party members (and, in the latter case, summons) without any apparent difficulty. The associated quest didn't sound particularly asset-heavy, so reinstating a party member that...

Based on the datamine, though, it seems like a lot of the most expensive stuff has already been done. For the additional playable character, at least, there are gifs of the animations (which don't look quite right, not because they weren't finished, but because the game's clothing animation...

Well, given that practically everything from the datamine ended up releasing later, even if they had to change the tie-in from a game to its sequel (the Terra Wars crossover was originally a Terra Battle 2 crossover), it would be legitimately disappointing if the last two things included in the...

Probably weapons, costumes, playable characters, the increased presence of the Kingsglaive, photo and Chocochick collection quests, controllable boats, vehicle mini-games, even a brand new summon... There were a lot of things that were made for DLC and festivals that made their way into the game...

Well, based on the Gematsu article, there's another, more sympathetic possibility -- that Tabata's replacement simply wasn't that invested in the project and wanted to make something that he was truly passionate about. If that's the case, we might actually end up better off in the long term. =P

How strange! The DLC cancellation would have been understandable if the project ran into issues that would have required more resources than had been originally allocated, but it makes little sense to cancel something that's going smoothly and offers an effectively-guaranteed return on...

Huh, that's... not what I expected for the trailer. Slowing it down, though... the Roman centurion helmet on those soldiers is a neat touch. I like the way Lucis 2000 years ago looks Roman to current Lucis' Gothic flavor.